Patchwork Death Star

I made a Patchwork Death Star pillow yesterday and people seem to really like it over on Instagram so I though I better share it here for those of you who aren't on IG. First, let me tell you a bit about the person who inspired me to make it.

You know how sometimes in life you meet someone and your personalities just click? That's what happened with me recently when I started a new job. One of my work mates and I just click and we work well together. It totally makes my day seeing this person and I really enjoy talking with them. So anyway, my friend is going through a bit of a hard time and I wanted to cheer them up. Since my super power is sewing (joking!) I naturally wanted to sew something for them. Enter the patchwork death star.

Here's what it looks like finished:

Patchwork Death Star pillow made by Anita of Daydreams of Quilts. Pattern by Quirky Granola Girl.
My friend loves movies, and Star Wars especially, so that was why I chose this project. You can find the free pattern here. The original pattern by Quirky Granola Girl is English paper pieced. While I do love EPP I wanted to get this project finished in one day so I used an applique method that I learned from Alyssa at Pile 'o Fabric in the Technicolor Galaxy course.


I printed out the pattern and taped the two halves together. I traced the whole pattern onto freezer paper. Then I placed a piece of muslin over the printed pattern and secured everything in place on my pressing board with pins. Working piece by piece I cut the shapes from the freezer paper and ironed them onto the front sides of my grey scraps. Then I cut them out, removed the freezer paper and glue basted them to the muslin using my iron to set the glue. (I used Elmer's washable glue sticks... the purple ones.)


Once all the pieces were basted down I fused strips of black Clover bias tape to cover the raw edges. To get a 3D effect it's important to imagine that the sun is shining on one side of the Death Star and work your fabric scraps from dark on the left to light on the right.


I cut around the Death Star with my rotary cutter to remove the excess muslin and glue basted the it to the background. I used black Cotton + Steel "Sprinkle" for my background. I put a piece of quilt batting behind the background and top stitched on all edges of the fusible bias tape to secure everything with black thread and quilt it at the same time. Then I fused bias tape around the whole outside edge of the Death Star and top stitched that. I added a quote from the movie "That's no moon" in white thread handwriting in free motion quilting and I free motion quilted the circle on the Death Star.

Then I trimmed, made my envelope pillow back and stitched that together with the pillow front and added binding in Lizzy House's Constellations fabric from her new Whisper Palette.


I am very happy with how this pillow turned out. I gave it to my friend almost immediately after finishing it and I think my cheering up plan worked. :)

P.S. Make sure you enter my 5 year Blog Anniversary giveaway before Thursday August 11th at midnight Mountain time! :)